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Yesterday, Intel expanded its bug bounty program to catch more issues like the extensive Meltdown and Spectre CPU flaws, but that was too little, too late for some chip owners. We knew three class-action lawsuits were filed in early January days after the vulnerabilities were publicized, but according to an SEC filing, the total has grown to 30 multi-party suits by customers and two securities suits. Most argue that Intel violated securities laws when it assured its products were safe to use, which the Meltdown and Spectre flaws revealed to be untrue.

Facebook doesn't normally have to answer questions about government leaders' public pages, but it might have to very shortly. Exiled Cambodian politician Sam Rainsy has sued Facebook insisting that it provide any information that might show Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen (above) bought millions of fake "likes" to feign popularity. Rainsy himself is the target of a defamation case for making the allegations, and is betting that Facebook's data can clear his name.

The case between Uber and Waymo is over, and Uber is settling with Waymo over claims that the former stole trade secrets. The payout is a 0.34 percent equity stake in Uber to Waymo which totals around $245 million, according to CNBC. Waymo's accusation was that Uber stole trade secrets (some 14,000 files, allegedly) after engineer Anthony Levandowski left Uber to start Otto, the self-driving truck company that was then purchased by Uber in 2016 for $680 million.

Shortly after Google released its first branded smartphones in 2016, the Pixel and Pixel XL, some early adopters reported a microphone issues. While they were fixed in phones produced later, the problems disabled all three mics on the devices and often cropped up at odd times, like when holding the devices in different ways or in cold temperatures. Now the search giant faces a class-action lawsuit alleging that the company knew about the issues but sold the phones anyway.

A woman suing Twitter for allowing ISIS activity on its website has had her case thrown out by a federal appeals court in San Francisco. The court ruled that Twitter Inc is not liable to families of two US government contractors killed in an Islamic State attack in Jordan for its failure to block ISIS from using its messaging services.

Faraday Future's executive exodus last fall was bad enough, but the departure of one exec may have been particularly troublesome. The electric car startup has filed a lawsuit alleging that former CFO Stefan Krause stole trade secrets and poached staff as he left to form a startup, Evelozcity. Reportedly, Krause was quietly working at both Faraday and Evelozcity for weeks before he was formally let go, and encouraged staff to not only leave, but take secret info on the way out. Faraday had announced Krause's exit in November over "possible violations of law," and now it's clear what those might be.

In 2016, haptic technology company Immersion filed two rounds of lawsuits against Apple. Both alleged that the tech giant had infringed upon some of Immersion's patents with the first focusing on the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s and 6s Plus as well as Watch, Watch Sport and Watch Edition. The second added the MacBook and MacBook Pro lines to its complaint. Immersion also filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission (ITC), which launched an investigation into the alleged patent violations a few months later. But the saga may be nearing an end because today, Immersion announced that the two companies have reached a settlement.

Self-driving car manufacturers dread lawsuits over crashes due to questions of liability, and GM is about to learn just how problematic they can be. Oscar Nilsson has sued GM after a December collision between his motorcycle and one of the company's self-driving Chevy Bolts. According to his version of events, he was trailing the Bolt when it started changing lanes. He tried to pass the autonomous car, but it "suddenly" swerved back into his lane, knocking him to the ground and injuring both his neck and shoulder.

Playboy has filed a lawsuit against Boing Boing, accusing the offbeat news blog of copyright infringement for linking to an Imgur gallery and a YouTube video that showed every Playmate centerfold. Boing Boing wasn't involved in the creation of the gallery and the video at all -- it simply reported upon the archive's existence. In its post announcing that it has filed a motion to dismiss, the publication called the case "baseless" and "bizarre." Linking is common practice among blogs and major media outlets alike, after all, and it's one of the most basic methods people use to exchange information online.

TWiT, aka This Week in Tech, is suing Twitter. The well-known tech netcast says Twitter has broken a number of written and oral agreements and is infringing on its trademark. The two companies started up around the same time in the mid-2000s, with Twitter co-founder Evan Williams telling TWiT's Leo Laporte that Twitter was simply a "text-based microblogging service". The two informally agreed that, despite the similarities in their names, their platforms were fundamentally different and were happy to co-exist on the condition, the lawsuit alleges, of "each company continuing its own unique distribution platform." As far as TWiT is concerned, that's no longer the case.

The Waymo v. Uber trial is set to finally get started next month, but Anthony Levandowski, the man who has been accused of taking 14,000 files from Google's self-driving outfit when he left the company for his own startup Otto, has been hit with a lawsuit that may affect Waymo's. Wired reports that Levandowski's former nanny, Erika Wong, has filed a suit against him claiming Levandowski failed to pay her wages, violated labor and health codes and inflicted emotional distress. But the complaint also includes details of Levandowski's business practices, which suggest that he might have been paying off employees of other autonomous vehicle companies and that he considered fleeing to Canada when Waymo first filed its lawsuit.

Facebook may have left itself wide open to whole heap of legal headaches after it recently reached an out-of-court settlement in a revenge porn case. Between late 2014 and early 2016, the naked picture of a 14-year-old girl from Northern Ireland was repeatedly shared to a "shame" page on Facebook. Police are said to have failed to act fast enough to build any kind of case, so the girl, who said she was blackmailed into sharing the image in the first place, sued the alleged perpetrator and Facebook instead. After exhausting efforts to get the case dismissed from the High Court, Facebook negotiated a confidential settlement with the teen, which is thought to be the first time anyone has achieved the slightest success in a suit of this kind.

Though TiVo and Comcast just wrapped up a round of patent infringement litigation, TiVo's looking for another go. Yesterday, it filed lawsuits in California and Massachusetts alleging that Comcast's X1 set-top boxes are infringing on no less than eight of its patents. "Through decades-long investment in research and development, Rovi has created innovations that delight consumers in their day-to-day entertainment experience. Our commitment to our customers and stockholders compels us to protect these valuable inventions from unlicensed use," TiVo CEO Enrique Rodriguez said in a statement. TiVo was acquired by Rovi in 2016. The merged companies took the more recognizable name TiVo and at joining, they together held over 6,000 patents.

In 2016, Huawei sued Samsung in both China and the US for allegedly infringing on multiple wireless communication patents, and today a Shenzhen judge ruled against Samsung. The court ordered Samsung to stop selling any product using technology protected by the one patent it found the company to have violated and ordered Samsung to pay a small court fee.

It's hard to keep track of all of the lawsuits Uber's juggling these days, but there's about to be one less. The company has settled a suit brought against it by 2,421 New York drivers who claimed Uber paid them less than was contractually obligated and falsely advertised how much drivers could make by working for the company. Uber will pay $3 million as per the settlement agreement while the drivers will agree to being classified as independent contractors -- a stipulation of two other settlements Uber has made with drivers in the past.

Senator John Thune, chair of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, has sent Apple CEO Tim Cook a letter with questions about the company's decision to slow older models of iPhones, Reuters reports. In December, Apple admitted to slowing older iPhones in order to prevent spontaneous shutdowns and later reduced its battery replacement price to $29 as way of apology for its lack of transparency.

Two years ago, kids electronics maker Vtech suffered a data breach that exposed the personal info of five million customers (over half of whom were not adults). Naturally, the DOJ on behalf of the FTC brought a lawsuit against the company for violating online privacy laws for children, becoming the first such case involving Internet-connected toys. Today, Vtech agreed to pay a $650,000 fine as part of a settlement with the FTC.

James Damore, the Google employee who was fired after circulating an anti-diversity memo last August, isn't over his dismissal apparently as he has now filed a lawsuit against his former employer. Damore filed a class-action complaint today in a California court alongside another former Google employee, David Gudeman. Both men say they were "ostracized, belittled and punished for their heterodox political views, and for the added sin of their birth circumstances of being Caucasians and/or males."

Airbnb may have just dodged a bullet. A Los Angeles federal judge has ruled against major American landlord Apartment Investment & Management Co (AIMCO) in its lawsuit accusing Airbnb of helping tenants violate their lease agreements through unapproved short-term rentals. The judge determined that Airbnb was protected by the Communications Decency Act, which protects internet services against liability for the content posted by their users. It's the tenants that are responsible for the rule-breaking listings, the court said, not Airbnb for hosting them.

Spotify is no stranger to facing lawsuits accusing it of offering unlicensed songs, but the latest could prove to be very costly. Hollywood Reporter has learned that Wixen Music Publishing, which manages the song composition rights for artists ranging from Neil Young to Zach de la Rocha, has sued Spotify for copyright damages of at least $1.6 billion. Wixen claims that the streaming service is using tens of thousands of songs without proper licenses and the compensation to match. The plaintiff had already objected to proposed $43 million settlement in another case in May, so this wasn't coming entirely out of the blue.

Earlier this month, Apple admitted to slowing older iPhone models in order to prevent phones with older batteries from suddenly shutting down. Now, Reuters reports that the company may face a legal battle in France over the practice. A French organization called HOP, which in French stands for Stop Planned Obsolescence, filed legal complaints against Apple in Paris this week. It also filed complaints against Epson for similar reasons.

Subscribe to cable service for long enough and you'll probably run into lousy customer service at some point, whether it's technicians who don't show up on time or phone reps that won't let you cancel. However, Comcast's behavior in Washington might take the cake. The state's Attorney General has filed an amended complaint alleging that Comcast subscribed more than half of its Service Protection Plan customers without consent since the option was first available in 2011. It frequently enrolled customers without even mentioning the plan, according to the lawsuit, but the worst was when it did -- employees reportedly claimed the $6 monthly service was free, and would even sign people up after they'd explicitly refused it.

Apple and Qualcomm aren't exactly the best of friends, so it's quite surprising to hear that Cupertino is facing fines for failing to produce evidence for a lawsuit against the chipmaker. According to Bloomberg, a San Jose, California court has ordered Apple to pay $25,000 for each day (starting from December 16th) it fails to turn over documents the Federal Trade Commission needs for its lawsuit. The agency sued Qualcomm earlier this year over anti-competitive practices: it offered the tech titan, for instance, lower royalty fees if it exclusively uses its baseband chips for the iPhone.